US: Dr Francis Crick, who helped discover the double helix shape of DNA, has died at the age of 88, his family said yesterday.
Dr Crick died at a hospital in San Diego after a long battle with colon cancer, the Salk Institute in nearby La Jolla said.
British-born Dr Crick won the Nobel Prize in 1962 for his work on DNA's structure, which he discovered in 1953 along with Dr James Watson at Cambridge University.
Watson and a third colleague, Dr Maurice Wilkins, shared the prize.
The names of Dr Crick and Dr Watson, youthful friends and colleagues at the time, have been linked ever since.
"I will always remember Francis for his extraordinarily focused intelligence and for the many ways he showed me kindness and developed my self-confidence," Dr Watson said in a statement from his office in Cold Spring Harbour Laboratory in New York.
"Being with him for two years in a small room in Cambridge was truly a privilege."
Dr Crick was born on June 8th, 1916, in Northampton but had been living in La Jolla, California where he was a distinguished research professor and former president of the Salk Institute.
"Francis Crick will be remembered as one of the most brilliant and influential scientists of all time," said Dr Richard Murphy, Salk Institute's president and chief executive.
Dr Crick, the son of a shoe-factory owner, studied physics and biology but had his efforts interrupted by the second World War. Dr Crick went to work as a scientist for the British admiralty, helping to design magnetic and acoustic mines.
"I still didn't know much about anything so I could go into whatever I wanted," Dr Crick said in 1997 in a lecture at Rutgers University in New Jersey.
"I used what I call the 'Gossip Test' to decide what I wanted to do," he added.
"The gossip test is simply that whatever you find yourself gossiping about is what you're really interested in."